Italian cinema dream team Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are cast against glamorous type and deliver two of the finest performances of their careers in this moving, quietly subversive drama from Ettore Scola. Though it's set in Rome on the historic day in 1938 when Benito Mussolini and the city first rolled out the red carpet for Adolf Hitler, the film takes place entirely in a working-class apartment building, where an unexpected friendship blossoms between a pair of people who haven't joined the festivities: a conservative housewife and mother tending to her domestic duties and a liberal radio broadcaster awaiting deportation. Scola paints an exquisite portrait in sepia tones, a story of two individuals helpless in the face of fascism's rise.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Ettore Scola, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray• Human Voice, a 2014 short film starring Sophia Loren and directed by Edoardo Ponti• New interviews with Scola and actor Sophia Loren• Two 1977 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loren and actor Marcello Mastroianni• Trailer• New English subtitle translation• PLUS: An essay by critic Deborah Young

I've never even heard of this, but a search of the board finds the two posters who've mentioned it by name also consider it the director's "masterpiece" (their words), so it has its fans. Anyone (else) familiar with this?

I've never even heard of this, but a search of the board finds the two posters who've mentioned it by name also consider it the director's "masterpiece" (their words), so it has its fans. Anyone (else) familiar with this?

Surprised that you have never heard of it, as it frequently appears in discussions of the greatest Italian films of all time. Like Il sorpasso previously, it is probably less well known to English speakers as it has never had an English-friendly release until Criterion now.

Scola is one of those directors who seems to be held in much higher regard on the continent, particularly in France, than in the English-speaking world.

For what it's worth, this came #4 on my 70s ballot behind Il conformista and The Godfather: Part I & II, which are probably three of my all-time top five.

I think I last saw this film about seventeen or eighteen years ago. My local library had it on VHS (oneof the big ol' bulky tapes with the big reels).

I can't remember if it had the Italian soundtrack or if it had been dubbed into English, butI do remember being very impressed with it at the time. It was a kind of chamber piece, with a good deal of the film taking place in a small apartment.

Scola is probably the best director of the 80s with an almost unbroken string of great films between 1977 and 1990. Badly underrepresented on DVD because he comes after the Golden Age of Italian Cinema. Hopefully this sells well enough for more of him. The film is also famous for Loren's best role.

I just finished watching this film courtesy of a very poor quality copy just arrived from Netflix. Getting past the sound and picture issues, I was impressed by the film's pace and tone. Having the constant interruptions from the celebratory radio blasts from the rally was a great device, keeping the two characters aware of their differences and positions even as they begin to speak without reservations. I don't even consider this a film that is too wordy, even considering it has few speaking roles, focusing nearly exclusively on Loren and Mastroianni. It is a great achievement to director Scola that the dialog nearly always felt realistic for the two main characters, hardly ever crossing into didactic political, philosophic or romantic musings while they end up discussing so many aspects to their lives. This film offers a great character study that never feels like it is treading into generalizations or exaggerations, as with the fascists in Fellini's "Amacord."

It will be interesting to hear in her own words what Sophia Loren has to say about the film; hopefully her interview sheds some light on the subtleties of her character that I did not pick up on not having been exposed to Fascisti housefraus often before.

-Human Voice, a 2014 short film starring Sophia Loren and directed by Edoardo Ponti

This is from the Jean Cocteau play of the same name, "La Voix Humaine"... Rossellini's adaptation LA VOCE UMANA makes up the first half of his feature L'AMORE (the second is IL MIRACOLO), which can be found on the BFI's Rossellini/WAR TRILOGY set....

The faux faded partial sepia effect is very 1970's, almost reminiscent of George Roy Hill's THE STING, but looks very dated now as a method of framing a 'past reality', casting it in somewhat soft and sentimentalised focus, and resisting the hardness of straight black and white or the vividness of full colour...

I haven't seen it in a long while and remember having very mixed feelings about it so it probably wouldn't be fair for me to comment too much: I just remember it being one of Altman's least interesting films and its structure being a mess. Not the fault of the actors, though; Loren and Mastroianni were fine, as was everyone else. It's been one I've been wanting to revisit and I wouldn't be surprised if it had its defenders now (not counting teenage boys who probably love the ending).

One big problem with Prêt-à-Porter was that it kind of provided its own ready-made lazy critique in its running joke of every member of the ensemble cast treading in dog mess at some point! Even Mastroianni and Loren aren't immune from that! I seem to remember their scenes in the film being relatively short as well, certainly not given the screentime that the much more grating odd couple relationship of Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts got.

I've seen numerous clips from A Special Day over the years (I also had a nth generation bootleg that was unwatchable) and its never looked like the Criterion, but by all accounts it's a faithful restoration of what the original prints looked like (ala Reflections in a Golden Eye). My first impression was that the look of this transfer was revisionist (like the DVD and subsequent blu of John Badham's 1979 Dracula), but apparently this is what A Special Day looked like theatrically in 1977 & all home video transfers until now were unsupervised and incorrect.